


big bird

by wtfmulder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Crack But Kind Of Not, Early MSR, F/M, Fluff, Post-Abduction Arc, UST, casefile, season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-10-31 23:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 11,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10909710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfmulder/pseuds/wtfmulder
Summary: Our duo are on a journey to see a huge fucking bird. Drabble series.





	1. Chapter 1

The past two hours were one long billboard to a theme park no one has ever been to and the woozy stench of paper mills popping up behind the river. And Mulder talking, and talking. And the sun in her eyes, and then not, and then again. She always forgets sunglasses.

“So no one was killed,” Scully clarifies. Mulder nods, the corner of his mouth lifting like he’s pleased to get reamed out. His sunglasses are hideous and Scully will steal them as soon as he puts them down. “Or robbed. Or even grievously injured.” No, Mulder shakes his head. “Not a single crime was committed.”

“A woman’s child was lifted into the air and dropped into a pond twenty feet away. A whole town is barricading itself in mortal terror.”

“But she’s not pressing charges and her baby is perfectly fine. No one has been implicated. No _thing_ has been implicated. A crime. Was not. Committed.”

“Something’s been implicated,” he defends. They zoom past another billboard. The theme park is desperate. They’ve been advertising children get in free, teenagers get in free, also you can bring up to three dogs, for the last thirty miles. Some of the ads are vaguely racist. All of them say please. 

“A bird. A bird has been implicated. That’s not even unheard of, Mulder! There are stories dating back to the seventies of children being snatched away by larger birds of prey. Completely verifiable. I’m sure you could find extensive documentation of it inside a regular library that doesn’t require a password and a blood oath to get through the front door.” She pauses and frowns. “Which I am still _very_ uncomfortable with, by the way. At least they let me use my own needle.” 

“Yeah, Scully, but this is different.” He rearranges his sunglasses. Scully wants to kill him. In twenty miles they’ll stop for gas, and the attendant will have an accent so thick Scully will ask him to repeat himself twice. “This is a _big_ bird.” 


	2. Chapter 2

Sandwood Trailer Park is a trailer park in all the right ways except the one way in which it is completely, unsettlingly not. Sparkling white mobile homes are spaced out among patchy wheat-colored grass. Flags fly high, all kinds of flags, American flags, confederate flags, a Christmas flag that’s two months past irrelevancy. A Dallas Cowboys flag floats so proudly Mulder wants to tear it down and burn it. A windchime sings a pretty song that beckons you forward. You cannot tell which home has the windchime. This is the purpose of windchimes.  
  
Now, Mulder and Scully have been to many a trailer park – it apparently comes with the territory. Mulder says poor people are more honest. Scully asserts they lack access to adequate mental health services. Both of them admit, in their heads alone, that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Digressing. They know a thing or two about trailer parks, anyway, more than you would (if you do not live in a trailer park, and possibly even still), and so they know that something is wrong. 

In all trailer parks you will find at least one person standing outside. Mowing their yard, listening to the radio, selling bibles door to door and never celebrating their birthday. Sometimes there is a kickball game, or a fight. But there are always gravel pathways with a decorative stone in the middle reading Faith, or Love, or Welcome Home, and there are always pick up trucks, and there are always, always people.  
  
Today everyone chooses to remain indoors. The silence is unbearable.

Mulder stares at Scully. Scully stares at Mulder. Perhaps they do this for a bit too long. A yellow fly bites one of them and that person hides their pain remarkably well. Together they walk down a bleachy white driveway covered in grimacing porcelain frogs and Mulder glues himself to Scully’s back when she knocks on the door. She is wearing Mulder’s sunglasses. Mulder will snatch them off her face sometime a bit later.

The man who answers is taller than Mulder and has a face you can trust. Just trust him, okay? He has a beard. He loves his mother. Everything smells like marijuana. He stares at them mildly from behind the torn up screen door and Scully tries a pleasant smile.

“Hello sir, my name is Dana–”

The man interrupts her with a voice like pure honey you can borrow from the old lady next door. It is very thick. It takes the two of them a moment to decipher what the hell he’s saying, but they get it. Eventually.  


“You folks here about the big bird?”  



	3. Chapter 3

You are so lucky to be reading this, and not hearing it said aloud. Mr. Craig has a voice like smooth honey you have borrowed from the old lady next door, but she stores it in a ketchup bottle.

Mulder and Scully nod their heads as he talks. They pretend to listen. They are offered tea and accept when Mr. Craig physically demonstrates what he means by bringing them the pitcher. Ugh, Mulder thinks. Sweet tea. Southerners are heathens.

Scully tucks the sunglasses in her purse. This is a mistake.

The thing about accents is that you just have to be patient with them because they aaaaaaall have a pattern. Mulder and Scully come to understand Mr. Craig. They do. Eventually. It takes an hour, sitting on a plaid couch and drinking sweet tea from solo cups. A gentle breeze drifts in through a half-boarded window, and it soothes the soul. Again, the windchimes. 

Everyone’s in hiding, Mr. Craig tells the agents, on account of the big bird. This is not the first time everyone has gone into hiding on account of the big bird. Mr. Craig has called the Fish and Wildlife services, the EPA, the police, and Bill Nye. The residents of Sandwood Trailer Park do not feel safe in their homes.

“You hafta ask Brenda if I got this right, she’s the one who seen it,” Mr. Craig says almost shyly, slipping a piece of paper over the coffee table. He clings on for a second as Mulder reaches for it. Mr. Craig is nervous. Art is just a thing he does, ya know. Nothin’ serious.

The drawing is remarkable. It is photorealistic. The feathers look more like feathers than those you could hold in your hand, and the creature in its entirety is magnificent, brave, with eyes that sing everything you know of freedom and a beak sharper than knives.  Don’t you wish you could see it? What is this bird? 

“But this is just a regular bird,” Scully says, and she isn’t wrong. She is not whining. She is not so, so tired.

Mr. Craig rolls his eyes. “That’s what I’m tellin’ you. It’s all plain. It’s just a big bird.”


	4. Chapter 4

The reality is, no one wants to talk about the big bird. There are many reasons for this. 

When you give voice to a fear you’ve been harboring the majority of your life you either have to face it or admit that you can’t. Do you find this easy? Could you look your best friend in the face, your boss, your mother, your enemy, your grocer, two friendly agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and tell them, quite plainly, I lock my door in fear of The Bird?  
  
And then speaking of our friendly agents – the residents of Sandwood Trailer Park just don’t trust ‘em. Why would they? Suits never did them no good. Suits take away your cars and then your kids and they laugh at you when you cross their path. The world is not kind to people who live in trailer parks. People who live in trailer parks never, ever forget this.  
  
Also, _Days of Our Lives_ is about to come on. The new episode. And someone’s about to get shot, or stabbed, and maybe there’s a wedding involved.

Mr. Craig takes charge in a brave sort of way neither Mulder and Scully will ever fully appreciate, because they don’t know about the big bird. He trails ahead of them and acts as their buffer. Because while no one trusts Special Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, everybody, yourself included, trusts Mr. Craig.   
  
The first house they stop by is Brenda’s house. Brenda is the mother of the baby who is now, coincidentally, a damn fine swimmer, and terribly afraid of heights. Brenda has to bend down real low when picking up her baby in order to not frighten it.   
  
Brenda does not have an accent, but she does have an associates degree in Information Technology. She has a small garden with snapdragons and posies and a tomato plant that will never, ever grow.   
  
“What can you tell us about the big bird?” Mulder asks her, filling her entire doorway. He wants in. This is the lead. This is where it all begins, and this is where he’ll find the answers.   
  
“It took my child,” Brenda says, voice dripping with disdain. She closes the door with Mulder still in it. Cryptozoology is only fun when it’s not trying to kill your family.  
  
It all goes downhill from there. Most people don’t even answer their doors – on account of the big bird. Others who do answer are exceedingly polite and exceedingly firm. They say please and thank you. They look scared out of their wits. There is one exception. I already bought your damn bibles, an old woman yells at Scully.   
  
“It ain’t that we’re stupid, or that we don’t care,” Mr. Craig shrugs, after the little tour is over. “It’s just no one ever else cared. Bout the big bird. Bout us, really.” He waves them goodbye, and walks back to his own trailer. He is just in time to make the latest episode of _Days of Our Lives._ His favorite character has been brought back to life for the third time, and that, they say, is the charm.

Mulder looks at Scully, and Scully looks at Mulder. Mulder is now wearing the sunglasses that he plucked from Scully’s purse.   
  
You may be asking yourself, why the big bird? What interest could Mulder and Scully possibly have in this creature which seems very much to be a regular old bird?

Scully will tell you she was never interested in the damn bird, but she’ll blush as she says it, and she won’t look you in the eye. Mulder will talk about bigclaw, ancient drawings of halfmen halfbird on rock bluffs and old caves. The Rukh, of Middle Eastern descent – a bird so large it made you forget there was a sun. He won’t mention nightmares, or a desperate need for a vacation. He won’t say a thing about how out of all the things that could take Dana Scully away from him in this world, the most harmless, the least plausible, appears to be a big, big bird.  



	5. Chapter 5

In Sandwood Trailer Park, every day is a good day for a picnic. This is true for every trailer park.

It would almost be romantic if Mulder and Scully were at all in love, even a little bit, with their rolled out towels from the car and their pile of fried bologna sandwiches (courtesy of beloved Mr. Craig). The sun touches Scully’s hair and the effect is magnificent. But it also touches her eyeballs, because Mulder is still wearing the sunglasses.

But they are not in love. They are coworkers, and begrudgingly friends. They are two people who are wrought together, melted into one by grisly circumstance after grisly circumstance, and shaped into a hard metal shell. If a softness is hidden away somewhere, if there is tender flesh quivering underneath this hard shell, they will not realize it for years to come.

For now, they watch for the big bird.

Before leaving, Mr. Craig was kind enough to clue them in on the basics. The most basic of all the basics is that the bird is big. Be careful now, he warns them, as if this creature is indeed large enough to carry away two full grown adults. Remember that we do not know the truth of this for certain. Remember that it could be you, lifted into the heavens by a bird with handsome eyes and no heed for the human experience.

“We ain’t never found no nest,” Mr. Craig tells them, also. “Don’t reckon we ever looked fer one. But it likes that little pond area. It don’t come out a lot. But sometimes. Sometimes I seen the big bird.”

And so begins the first day of Mulder and Scully, staking out this big bird. How Mulder convinced Scully to sit there by that murky pond, the air thick with whistling bugs and ungodly humidity and the sun beating down on their ungodly straight backs, just to look out for a dumb little bird, no one will ever know. But you have an idea. Don’t you? 

What they don’t realize is that as they sit and wait, too hot in their suits, lost in their own thoughts (which are both startlingly opposite and startlingly alike), lost in their boredom, lost in a shimmery haze of their own sexual tension, is that they, too, are being watched, as they sit and watch for the big bird.  



	6. Chapter 6

“–And in 1976, there were multiple sightings of a bird in flight that obstructed the  _sun_ from view, for all unlucky bastards commuting Malfunction Junction. Page 194.”

The Belle Motel is the most orange motel you’ve ever seen in your life. It has orange walls, orange bedspread, orange sinks and showers and side tables. The owner is leathery and also quite orange. She warns them about the pool. Don’t go in it, she says. I’m warning you.

“That was an Andean Condor, Mulder. It says so right here.” She points to a photo of a particularly large bird, but it’s nothing like our big bird. Our big bird has a heart of pure steel and is made entirely of malice. “It escaped from the zoo. They were able to capture it, and this story has an incredibly sad end – the poor thing was tranquilized midair and fell forty feet to its death.”   
  
“Dublin, Ireland. Reports of a gigantic bird dropping sheep on cars. I’ll spare you the jokes.”

“That was a golden eagle.” She shows him another picture. She ignores the joke. This is a fairly recent thing. Perhaps the aliens also abducted her ability to smile, just as they abducted his ability to live a normal life. “To be fair, that is a very, very big bird.”   
  
He stops pacing and and grabs the stack of papers from Scully, who really is no fun when armed with evidence like this. He tosses all the useless junk to the side and slips her the stuff that supports his theory.

“Here.” He points to a newpaper headline,  _Frightening Flyers Frustrate Town Criers_. “Read this and everything onward. You said it yourself earlier. It’s not uncommon for a bird to play claw-machine games with human children. But we are looking at a big, big bird here, Scully.”

“This is what I gave my blood for, Mulder?” Scully says incredulously, flipping noisily through the pages. “When are you going to tell me what they plan on doing with it, by the way?”   
  
“I’ll tell you as soon as I know,” Mulder lies, bending down to tie his laces. He has decided to go on his late night run. He holds no fear of the bird. He does hold a fear of sleepless nights, tossing and turning in an orange motel bed while fixating on everything he’s ever done wrong. “Scully, listen.” He stands up and puts on his most placating smile, which is mostly pretty, and only a little condescending. “Cryptozoology isn’t all Big Foot and Mongolian Death Worms. It’s simply the study of creatures that have yet to be discovered. If we find this bird, we can name it after you.” Fat chance in hell, Mulder thinks, but Scully’s melting under his hands on her shoulders. Maybe she'll… “Hey, Scully? Join me for a run?”

“Oh, no thank you Mulder.” Of course not.

Before he leaves, he turns to face her from the doorway. Scully’s orange hair blends in with the orange wall. She looks bald, and Mulder’s heart clenches. “By the way Scully, want me to pick you up a pair of sunglasses?”  
  
Scully frowns. “No, why?”  
  
“Nevermind.”  
  
As Mulder jogs out of sight, Scully does read  _Frightening Flyers Frustrate Town Criers_ and everything onward, and she prepares herself for the long, miserable journey of looking for the big bird.


	7. Chapter 7

Birding is a sport, and birdwatching is a hobby. Please do not mistake one for the other when speaking to a birder. Birders keep life lists and publish books and carry binoculars to the grocery store. Birders will ruin your sixteenth birthday celebration when, on the way to the restaurant, they’re certain they’ve spotted the ever elusive black-tailed godwit. In a brief spell of utter tyranny, they will pull the car over and whip out a foldable chair, oblivious to your tears and youthful longing. Birders live birds.

Birdwatchers watch birds.

Mulder and Scully, then, are birdwatchers. No one else in Sandwood Trailer Park could be considered a birdwatcher. They do not watch the bird. They tremble. Even Mr. Craig, who may be too stoned to fully appreciate the power of the bird and is too utterly courageous to mind it anyway, does not watch the bird.

The residents of Sandwood Trailer Park do not watch the bird, but they do watch Mulder and Scully. They’ll be sweeping up palmetto bugs or calling their sisters or fiddling with their bootleg copies of  _Forrest Gump_  when they suddenly get the urge to watch the crazies who watch the bird. Whole families sit by their windows to watch Mulder and Scully, who sit patiently on their towels and watch, and watch, and watch for the big bird.

Mulder has a pair of binoculars. This seems counterintuitive. After all, this  _is_  supposed to be a  _big_  bird. Scully wears sunglasses because Mulder left them on her motel bed. Somehow this all works out. For now. They spend hours in waiting, with occasional refreshments provided by Mr. Craig.

Now there are parts of ourselves we lose as we grow up, some of it for the better. When’s the last time you stuck gum in your best friend’s hair? But some of it we should miss.

Shania Cano is ten years old and terrible at math. She has chubby cheeks and chubby arms and chubby legs, and her teacher tells her every day to sit still and stop being so mad. Shanio Cano is tired of looking at Mulder and Scully, and tired of sitting inside while her older sisters fight over a  _Tiger Beat_  magazine published the year before.

She walks outside. Nobody notices. Both Mulder and Scully start when she saunters up right next to them and kicks at the dirt.

“You guys lookin’ at the bird?” She says, crossing her arms and avoiding their gazes. There’s a fine red dust over all of her clothes and she doesn’t like the way adults look at her like they’re sad.

“Do your parents know you’re out?” Scully asks, concerned. Shania ignores her and reaches down to snatch the slip of paper hanging loosely in Mulder’s hands.

“Hey!” He says, sitting up to grab it back. Shania holds it out of reach and frowns.

“What is this?” She shakes her head, crumbling up Mr. Craig’s beautiful drawing. “This ain’t the big bird.”


	8. Chapter 8

The big bird, the girl explains, is all the parts of a bird, but all the wrong sizes. It’s the goofiest lookin’ thing she’s seen in her damn life. 

“It’s got a skinny lil body.” She holds her hands close together to demonstrate, and slowly expands them in wonder and slight derisiveness. “And big, big wings. Big as a plane.”

“Did you see any special markings on the wings, Shania?” Mulder asks, scribbling away in his notebook. He speaks to Shania as if she were an adult and a top ornithologist, as if he believes her very, very much.

“Naw, they were all black. Same as the bird. Whole thing was all black with yellow eyes. It doesn’t fly real well, though. It just…” she flaps her arms in the air, stumbles around like a drunk. “Nothin’ like that drawing. This bird is dumber than hell.”  


“Where’s your mommy, Shania?” Scully repeats for the fourth time. Finally, Shania shoots her an annoyed look and sighs with a weariness that looks quite odd on such a young girl.  


“She’s inside. They’re all inside! They’re all afraid of the bird.”  


“And you aren’t?” Mulder asks patiently.   


“I ain’t afraid of the bird,” Shania replies, so proudly resolute it leaves no room for further argument. The girl clenches more grass in her ruddy fists and dumps it methodically into the pond.  
  
Mulder and Scully continue to watch for the bird as Shania continues to terrorize the environment. There is a headache flourishing in the space above Mulder’s nose, courtesy of spending hours staring almost directly into the sun. What a help it would be, what an absolute relief, if only he had a pair of sunglasses.  
  
Other, lesser, plain old small birds squawk in the distance. They are angry that the world can so easily forget about them. The residents of Sandwood Trailer Park have a lot in common with the other, lesser, plain old small birds. They sit next to electric fans and stacks of coupons and piles of flipflops and they squawk, too, as the agents and Shania Cano remain vigilant in wait of this big bird.   
  



	9. Chapter 9

Looking for the bird isn’t all fun and games. To explain just how hot a day can get in the woozy, swamped up south is like explaining why anyone would choose to live there. It sticks to their faces and the backs of their necks and it lights up their black suits like black charcoal. They do not think to not wear suits. And of course there are the bugs, bigger than the palm of your hand and meaner than your clenched fist. Mulder has yet to unclench. The sandy soil, the long, long hours, the silence. The silence.

It’s also perturbing on a much more existential level, waiting for something that should not exist. And you must understand. A bird like this should not exist on any realm, and defies all laws of nature as we know them (and even as we don’t). Why was this bird put here, to upset this small, unobtrusive slice o’ life? What have the residents of Sandwood Trailer Park done to deserve such anguish? Is it even a question of deserving? Do we ever truly deserve anything that’s happened to us, is nature inherently unjust, or is it doling out a punishment we cannot bring ourselves to dish out?

Scully plays a game that Mulder does not like. It is not actually a game. When they sit in silence for too long she thinks about what she’s missed, and she asks him to fill in the blanks. The House and the Senate, complete party switch? I’ve never missed an election, she tells him. Not even the midterms. Agent Brinkley got promoted? What a jerk. How did that happen?

Scully, could you just pick up a newspaper? he wants to ask. Could you watch TV? Could you ask your mom? I don’t know, Scully. I don’t know anything. I was gone for three months. 

Of course he doesn’t say this to her. He answers her questions to the best of his ability and her eyes squint under the sunglasses as she slowly nods her head, and Shania runs circles around them, yelling at the bird to come take her away.

It lapses back to silence and they continue to look out for the big bird. 


	10. Chapter 10

Something does happen in the middle of all the nothing. It’s slow and it’s invisible and you might not notice it until it’s too late, like a bad, bad sunburn. You are receiving the moral of the story before you receive the payoff. Disgusting. How damnably puritan. 

Mulder and Scully receive another visitor.

“You think we should kill it?” is the first thing that comes out of Dylan Greere’s mouth, and everyone hears him before they see him. Do not make sudden movements or announcements around people with guns who might assume you’ve come to peck their eyes out. Mulder and Scully take their hands off of their holsters and will their bodies to calm down.

Mulder studies Dylan Greere, the hunch in his stick-bug frame and the unfortunate texture of his face. Dylan Greere is thirteen years old and would not mind killing something, especially, _especially_ if it’s the big bird. 

“Do you think we should kill it?” Mulder asks. His own answer is a resounding no. Mulder wants it safe, wants it studied, wants a t-shirt with its likeness and bragging rights on his message board.

“Hell yes,” Dylan says. “I saw it. I saw it carry away a whole man, just like that.” He smacks his hands together and a moment later he shudders. He’s been having weird dreams lately. Only some of them involve the big, big bird.

“What did it look like?” Mulder whips his notepad out like he whips out his gun and tears up pages featuring doodles of killer crows and grackles. 

Dylan blushes and falls silent. The pinkness makes his pimples less obvious but his emotional frailty all too clear. “Dylan?” Scully pushes gently, slipping off the sunglasses to soften her face. “What have you seen?”

“Well…” he starts out slowly, averting their curious gazes. Shania stares at him too. She has a rock in her hand that she’s coated with dirt and mud. Dylan sucks. Why’d he have to come out? “It's… big.”

Mulder and Scully look at him plainly. He rushes out, embarrassed: “And it’s yellow, okay? It’s a goddamned big bird and it’s yellow and has huge eyes and it eats dudes whole.”

Oh.

Oh, Dylan.

“Haha!” Shania breaks into uncontrollable giggles, dropping her rock to the ground and following it gracelessly. She rolls around, clutching her tummy and screaming out, “That’s Big Bird, you idiot! That’s the bird on TV! You’re afraid of Big Bird!”

“Shut the hell up, fatass,” Dylan roars, climbing over the agents to pick up Shania’s dropped missile. He holds it over her head and goes to launch but Mulder grabs him by the wrist, wrestles him around.

“Can’t be picking on little girls, kid. That’s not cool.” He grabs the rock and tosses it in the pond. The sound is not satisfying. Plunk.

“I’m telling you it’s yellow,” Dylan huffs. “And I’m going to kill it.” And he sits down in the grass and glares mightily at the sky. 

Something, indeed, has happened. There are now four lost souls, searching blindly in the heavens. Others take notice. Others take chances. This is when Sandwood Trailer Park begins to take interest in its very own big, big bird. 


	11. Chapter 11

No no, you’ve got it all wrong. The big bird doesn’t  _fly_. No one ever said it  _flew_ –

You are so full of shit, Jenna, of course it  _flies_ –

No it don’t, I swear that on my own life. It just runs real fast. Faster than anything. I think it came from Australia with all those criminals and it hid away for a long time till we started developing crap and now it don’t got no where else to go.

You hug those trees any tighter you’ll get bark burn on your tits.

 _Ellen_!

Girls! Come in the house!

***

It breathes fire, man. It  _breathes_.  _Fire_. Scorched my house, do you see it? Mine’s the one with the –

That one at the end, with the boarded up windows? You a big Pantera fan, Luther?

Yeah man, but I didn’t paint that shit. I owe some money to this guy who – wait, who’d you say you are again?

…

You’re fucking Feds?

***

Anyone ever tell you you’re depressing in all that black? It’s ninety degrees out. Those sunglasses are awful. You’re just going to sit here, looking for the bird? Tax dollars well spent, then. Clinton was an omen. Do you have a cigarette? I haven’t been out of the house in days. No cigarettes? You’re just going to die of sunstroke, then, not lung cancer. Okay.

The bird isn’t real. Everyone here is crazy. I never should have moved back here, but mother won’t let anyone else come take care of her. She’s too proud. She also buys into this bird stuff but she’s losing it, so of course she does. Talk to her.

***

Sorry for all that mess about the bibles, dear. It’s just they never quit. I got so many I have to bury ‘em because I don’t believe in throwing them away, even if those people are madder’n sin.

I’ve lived here longer than you been alive and the bird’s been here longer’n me. It never meant to cause us no trouble and most of the time it doesn’t. But when food gets scarce and huntin’ season starts back up, well.

I remember about thirty years ago, a young woman lived here with her baby. Real quiet and smart like Brenda, and it happened to her, too. Minding the garden with the baby crawlin’ through the grass. She looks up and the baby’s gone. I seent the bird flapping away and I hear the baby crying and we’re all running at it, everyone one of us in the park, with our hands out, hollerin’ for the Lord. But nothing nobody could do.

Thank heavens it dropped the baby, same as Brenda’s, in that little pond there. I think it needs to drown its prey cuz it be old. It scared that woman straight out of her little head. She took the baby’n left. Never did know what happened to her or her little boy, alls I know is she ain’t the first, ain’t the last to be flew out by the big bird.


	12. Chapter 12

Everyone takes turns or they go out all at once, bringing their knitting or their Bud Light or their nerf balls, and they play around Mulder and Scully, speak around Mulder and Scully, generally treat Mulder and Scully as if they weren’t there.

There is nothing more close-knit than a trailer park in the middle of a dry summer, in the midst of unspeakable horror. Hurricanes and mass layoffs and the death of a beloved Harley. The last cigarette for a month, the end of football season. Your father’s pill addiction and pawning this and pawning that until there’s nothing left to pawn and then pawning whatever comes next. There are trailer parks you’ll spend your whole life in and trailer parks you’ll only move into when hard times hit, and none of that matters. The trailer park in this story could be any trailer park, and Sandwood residents could be any residents. Only the big bird could not be any other big bird. It is only this big bird.

“This isn’t going to do shit,” says Luther, who’s been clawing at the bugs under his skin for a good thirty minutes. “Just waiting and looking. We need to go find it.”

“The bird always comes back here, Luther, you’re just on meth again,” remarks the old woman, rolling her eyes.

“I agree with him,” Mulder says, although no one seems to care what Mulder says. “We should be taking action. We need to assess its habits and form a search.”

(“I am having difficulty articulating what a colossal waste of time this is,” Scully will later admit at the motel, hands folded in her lap as a testament to her graveness. “I’m past the point of arguing the validity of… a single word we’ve had spoken to us in the last twenty-four hours.”

Mulder, who’s been wearing sunglasses indoors for the past hour and a half as a defense mechanism, and also as protection from all the orange, tells her: “Isn’t that what makes it fascinating? Isn’t that the point? We make claims and tell lies and even hallucinate the hypotheses, and then we wait for the kernel of truth to pop out. This is the scientific method going live, Scully.” He pats her on the shoulder, thinks about pulling her close. He feels happy for some reason. “This is what we  _do_.”

Scully reluctantly agrees. With the sentiment, and to continue their search for the big bird.)


	13. Chapter 13

In one day, you will be told about the big bird. You will be intrigued. You will return home after doing whatever you are prone to do and you will think about the conversation once, and then twenty times, and you will think of the bird – the one that spits fire, loves fistfights, predicts the next President, dictates your dreams from black holes in the night and eats automobiles whole, without even coughing up the bones.

The next day, you will be invited to help look for the bird. What an absolute honor. What a steal. A paltry five dollars for a pivotal life experience and two hot dogs and a bag of Fritos is nothing to thumb your nose at.

The day after that you will purchase the t-shirt. They will be sold for fourteen dollars, ninety-five cents, and the print will wash out in the laundry because it’s written in knockoff sharpie. BIG BIRD, in fancy bubble letters, crossing the chest. There will be no drawing of the bird on the t-shirt that costs fourteen ninety-five, because no one will agree on what to put.

You will be invited to look, again, and you will say yes.

Bring your sunscreen, bring your beer coozie, do not bring your small animals or babies, bring your extra grill tongs and your paperback and your lawn chair and, for the love of God, bring your sunglasses.

Because if it’s there, if this whole thing is real, if what we spend our time imagining, fearing, weaving stories of into our lore, our legends, our made-for-TV-movies, can be quantified, photographed, explained, parodied and mass-produced, well gosh darn we should take it. Right?

Shouldn’t we  _all_  want to see the big bird?


	14. Chapter 14

And so word spreads, as word tends to do. These words are spreading as you read them and the words you read after will also spread, and then the words after that. In your brain there are words that spread, traipse along synapses and gray matter and stretch and lengthen – can you feel them? sometimes words are so physical – and they won’t ever stop. The truth is that people won’t ever shut up, maybe even when they should.

Some words spread more thoroughly than others.  
  
The word of the bird, well.  
  
It can be argued that Mulder never should have bragged under his internet pseudonym and told all of his strange friends about a bird that speaks English and eats its prey stewed, or that Dylan shouldn’t have used it as an excuse to skip school for an entire month. It was the bird, he argued. The bird! There are other reasons Dylan skipped school. Some of them are upsetting, and some of them are very funny. Some of them are indeed the bird.  
  
Only a few days in, watching the bird. Beautiful Mr. Craig and solemn Brenda are the only ones who choose to remain inside. It’s a gorgeous afternoon. The children cover big rocks with lots of mud and lob them at each other almost lazily, and the adults worry about bills in a different way than most people worry about bills. Mulder and Scully watch, and sometimes they argue. Today they both suffer. The sunglasses are resting in an orange motel room, waiting.  
  
Then there’s a mass in the corner of everyone’s eye – terrifying, grim, it sets their souls ablaze as they scramble to assess it and a collective gasp sounds out over windchimes and weedwackers and the  _thud_  of a mud rock hitting Mulder square in the face. Oh, God! Behold! How could it be…  
  
People. It’s people. At least ten of them, never before seen in Sandwood Trailer Park.  
  
Who are they? Does it matter? Don’t you know what they want?  
  
They want to see the bird.


	15. Chapter 15

_S_ ometimes, there are people who are rude and also right. In this story we will assume that Dr. Moreton is both always rude and always right. We will hate him so vehemently it hurts us to know we have the ability to carry that hatred in our hearts, and we will wish that he were not so painfully, unreasonably right. We will rejoice when he is wrong. He will not be. And so we will hate him even more.

 _U_ nder the swaying trees with his clipboard and his labcoat and his real binoculars, his appropriate binoculars, binoculars that will most certainly get the job done, he ignores the conversations of others, ignores the commotion, ignores the cigarettes and the fruit juice and the homemade fried gizzards with Hidden Valley Ranch he’s so kindly been offered.

 _N_ ow, it’s important to understand that while Dr. Moreton follows Agent Mulder’s work – F. M. Luder, could you  _be_  any more transparent – it is not out of anything resembling respect, because he does not respect Agent Mulder. Dr. Moreton loathes Agent Mulder with a passion typically reserved for tracking Ahools and Bunyips. Agent Mulder is fanciful, bordering on purpley prosaic; he is a dangerous mind, not only to the field of cryptozoology but to all known creatures as well, for he validates the drunken, baseless ramblings of any drugged out wacko who appeals to either his deranged imagination or his very obvious suicidal tendencies.

…  _G_ osh, Dr. Morton. Isn’t that a little harsh? Do you have to be so hurtful?

 _L_ ike, maybe you should take a chill pill?

 _A_ nd what does dreadful Dr. Moreton think of Dr. Scully? Well, it appears that Dr. Scully only encourages her partner. To him this is even worse.

 _S_ cully will eventually come to a head with Dr. Moreton. She will recognize that he is right even as she hates the very cells of him. Maybe she will punch him. Perhaps you are like Scully and you will believe him, too. Even as you as you wish so desperately for him to be killed off. Even as you cry and curse a world that allows for his existence when things are so bad already. Dr. Moreton  _and_ the big bird? What did anyone do deserve this? What did  _you_  do to deserve this? But…

 _S_ ome of you are undoubtedly like Mulder. Some of you will think, “Who gives a damn?” about anything Dr. Moreton has to say, despite the fact that he is probably, most likely, almost definitely right.

 _E_ very one of you will be validated, in some way.

 _S_ o for now, let us forget Dr. Morton, and continue to watch for the big, big bird. 


	16. Chapter 16

The new people are a strange breed. Most of them are some kind of friend and most of them are some kind of stranger. They’re schoolmates and grocery store owners and bus drivers; most importantly they’re the people you wave to in public and would never think to invite into your home! Or the patch of drying grass outside of it!

”What’s this we heard about a big bird?” someone asks, hands wrapped around a gigantic camera. “Biggest bird anyone’s ever seen, I hear?” They almost drop their gigantic camera. Other new people parrot the sentiment. Big bird? Something about a big goddamn bird? Ridiculously huge bird that drinks Mad Dog? Speaks in riddles? Delivers graduation presents? Click, click, click. What a camera. 

“What?” Shania yells, with her hands on her hips. “The big bird don’t do nothing like that. That’s crazy.”

“That’s crazy?” someone else asks her. Do you ever forget when you’re speaking to a child? Most people forget they are talking to a child, when they talk to Shania. “No crazier than thinking it steals babies!”

We will forget the sunglasses for a short while. Mulder and Scully have more pressing matters to attend to, and they are so good at ignoring their personal problems in the face of an apparent crisis. “This,” Mulder tells the chattering crowd, after straightening his tie and revealing his badge. “Is a federal investigation. If you have any information whatsoever regarding the nature of this–”

“FBI!” One new person cries, outraged under her floppy sunhat. “Have you guys been looking for the guy who stole my car?”

“My uncle went missing two years ago!

"Ya’ll gonna do anything about that scammer I’m still putting through college?”

Mulder wisely shuts up. Scully pats his straining forearm. It must be magic, how his body suddenly relaxes, and he takes a step back.

The new people and the old people watch and watch until the sky goes dark, and the birds go away to their houses. The new people also go away to their houses. The old people are already at their houses. Tomorrow they will all be back to wait some more for the big bird.


	17. Chapter 17

The new people bring more new people, and those new people bring more new people. The story of the bird rises – quite like a bird itself – and rises.

They set up tables and play cards and someone even brings out a stereo. In between Salt-N-Pepa’s  _Very Necessary_  and three different Warrant albums you can hear Mulder praising the song choice and also asking, remarkably politely, for the volume to be lowered, please, as it could frighten the bird.

“That’s nonsense,” a man yells, sporting a baseball cap that reads  _Blue Jays_. This bird is not a blue jay, but it was the closest thing he could find. “The bird isn’t afraid of anything.”

Yeah! The crowd yells. The bird isn’t afraid of anything! The bird isn’t afraid of anything! The bird is afraid of one thing! We heard the bird does not like loud cars. We all parked by the Save-A-Lot half a mile away.

“The bird is afraid of a lot of things,” glowers Dr. Moreton. “The bird is just a –” but you won’t have to suffer through what Dr. Moreton thinks.

Residents of Sandwood Trailer Park stand around, uneasy.  _Days of Our Lives_  is on, a rerun of a much older episode. But it’s a good episode. There’s trash everywhere, different from the trash that’s normally everywhere. No one in Sandwood Trailer Park smokes  _Morley’s_. They all smoke  _350’s_. They’re fifty cents for three packs. And it’s so loud the windchimes don’t sing, and the small birds hide away. Mulder and Scully try to reassure them. Mulder and Scully watch out for the children, and enforce the state curfew. But the residents of Sandwood Trailer Park are not reassured by our two bemused agents.

A banner is made by a group of middle school children, and everyone signs it, including Mulder and Scully. “Big Bird, Big Claws.” No one knows exactly what it means. It’s probably very literal.

The new people do their homework, make home videos, make each other cross stitched renditions of what they feel the bird should look like. Dylan waits with his BB gun. Shania plays with rocks. The old woman and her daughter shake their heads and crave their rocking chairs and the other residents do other similar things, and try to forget their nightmares. Mulder and Scully touch shoulders while they sit. Everyone, of course, looks to the sky. Everyone watches for the big bird.

Except for Brenda, and her baby. Except for Mr. Craig. Brenda, her baby, and Mr. Craig do not watch for the big bird.


	18. Chapter 18

The high school has a new mascot that is large and feathery with dead glass eyes and yes, it is some version of the big bird. It comes to Sandwood Trailer Park after school has let out, and people ask for autographs and take pictures with it. The costume itself is terrifyingly real. It is much loved and very quickly so, for the last mascot was silly and not at all scary but perhaps a little insensitive. 

It’s savvy Mr. Craig who suggests charging an entrance fee, after lamenting over his crushed snap dragons. He makes the hot dogs in his trailer and provides all the off-brand drinks. He does not participate in the festivities, however, except to help fish out the mascot’s head when it plunks into the pond. Mr. Craig is a wonderful swimmer with two green thumbs and enviable business acumen. He is also afraid of heights.   
  
People eat thin hot dogs and drink juice from barrel shaped plastic receptacles as they roll their eyes and curse the state of the world, where you cannot even experience nature without being charged for it. They miss the trash bags and they pee in bushes. The mascot tries to incite a fist fight with Dr. Moreton, whose notes on the bird you may read here:

B҉i҉̴g͠͠c̶̛l̶a̵w̡̛ ̢-͘-̸̡ ̸t҉̛h͡i̸̕s͢ ҉͡i̶s҉ ̛ḩ̶o̷w̛ ̷͢w̷͢e̴͜ ͏͢r̴̛ef̨e͝͡r͘ ̸͘to̕͟ ļ͢ą̕r͢g͜͠e͘͘ ̛b͝i҉҉rd҉s̶͘ ͟t̕͢h̵̸a̢t҉̸ ҉a̴͘r͏e̶̡ c̡̛on̸͟si̸d̢e͘red͡ ̷̨̛ţ̷o͜͞ b҉̸e̵͘͜ ̧͜ųn̢͏̸cl͘a̵ss̡įf̛i̛̕͡e͡d.͟͟ ̢̕͢Ţ̵͘h̵e͢s̕e͟ si̸̡g͟҉htįn̨gs̷̷ ͞m҉i̕g̴͘͢h̴̨t̴͘ į͡͡n͘͏͢c̢͘l̕͠u̕͜d͡e ̴̷fȩ͞at͟͡ų͡r̵ę͡s҉ ̧c̛o҉ņs͏̨͞i̶͡d̡e̵̶͏r͞e͜͠d͞ o͠uts̸̕i̕d̶e҉̢ ̡͘t͢͢he͏̷ r̶҉ea͝͝҉lm͠҉ ҉o̴̢f̛ ̧k҉̕n̕o̧͝w̧̕͠n̢͞ s̴̢̕cie̴͜n͞c̵ę̶͝,̕ ̢͏b̷u̵̷t̕ ͞o̶̕f͢t̕e̵n͟ ̶t͏̶͟h͠e̛y͘ ar̵e i̵n͘ ̡f̶̡a̕͞c̕t҉͡ ̡ju͡͠͠st̕ r̢̢e̢gu̧͘la̕r͘ ̴̸b̷̡ir͝d̛͠s̶͜.̷̧ ̢͠I̶͢͢n̵̨ ̵t̕͢h͜͡i̶͠s͡ ͟s̴͟͡p̵̢e̡c̨͝i͞fi͞c̶̸͡ l̕͘o̢c͘͞a͏ti̧͡o̕͢n͢ ҉I b͞e҉̵͡l҉i͠͝e̡͡v̵̢͢e͡ ̷w̢͢e̡͟͝ ̷̨a̶͡r̴͢e ̛loo̵̵k̢͞in̶͢g҉̴ ͏̢͘fo͝r͟ ̶̧Jo͟͡h̵n͟͢ ̧͜A͏̛u͜͝d͘͠u͠bǫ̶͝n͡ ̶F͡a̢l̡̛͜c̡͜o̕ ͢w̴̢͟ą̶s̵̨͜h͞͏̷i̴̛͝n̨͠g̴̡t̷o̢͢ņi҉i ̸̵s̨iģ̧͠h͠ti̴̶̶ng ̢bi͠g̕ b̧̛r͝o͝͏w̕͡͠n ̡͝҉G͏r͏e͘a̕͏t҉͟ L҉aķ̷e͢s̷̨ ͢҉r͏̡es̷̢p̴e̕̕͟c̶t̕a͡b̢l̴e̶—  
  
Oh! Dear! This is unfortunate. It appears that the new mascot of the local high school has accidentally caused Dr. Moreton to drop his notebook in the pond, and all of his notes are now lost forever. Mr. Craig tried hard to rescue them. He really, really did.   
  
The media catches on quickly. This is most likely due to mass vacation time requests taking over the city. Who, at the moment, is running the businesses? The grocery stores? The cable companies and the paper mills and the power plants and the little family owned feed store everyone is so fond of because of its discount prices compared to most chains? It is impossible to know. No one is watching any of those places.  
  
Everyone is watching for the big bird.


	19. Chapter 19

The Audubon Society lists Sandwood Trailer Park as an Important Bird Area. Gracey Maples, celebrity birder, refers to it as  “The Park of the Lark.” No one calls her out on how the big bird could not possibly be a lark. Larks are but tiny birds with tiny dreams, and would be uncomfortable with the level of fame that’s been bestowed upon our very own bird. No one calls her out on this because they know it’s just a thing. It’s just a thing she does. 

Everyone who’s anyone listens to what Gracey Maples has to say; this is a woman who has seen  _a lot_ of birds.   
  
“You haven’t a bird, if you haven’t seen this bird. And I’ve seen over nine thousand birds,” she tells the reporter from  _Avians With Attitude_ (AWA), puffing up her chest like a bird. “So there’s a lot at stake, here. We just  _have_  to see this bird.”

Nine thousand birds. Have  _you_ seen that many birds? Have you seen that much of anything in your entire life?

And so the birders begin to flood in from all over the state.

From all over the country.  
  
And, for a select, ambitious few – from out of it.   
  
The birders are obvious because they point to random things, and will physically push you aside if they feel you are in their way. The birders are obvious because they tell you they are birders and they will tell you, over and over again, that they have been looking for this bird their entire lives.

“I’ve been looking for this bird my entire life,” one man tells the old woman, who now begins each day with three pulls of Old English before she drinks her coffee. 

“Well shit!” She hollers, throwing her hands up to the sky. “So have I!”

I been watching all these long, long years of my life, she tells the now uninterested party, who continues to point at absolutely nothing. I been watching, I been watching, I been watching. It never did me no good though.  
  
He doesn’t listen. She repeats herself, shaking her head. It never did no one no good to see that big bird.


	20. Chapter 20

**Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature!  
**

“Sir! Sir! Can you tell us what interest the FBI has in all of this?”

“I’m afraid I cannot comment on that.”  
  
***

“Is it true that this bird is a wanted felon in four different states?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

***

“Hey man, we’re writing with  _Hominids Anonymous._ You mind giving us a few quotes for our zine?”

“I’m sorry, I really can’t be discussing any of this with you…” A half-hour later, behind some trees: “Luder. L-U-D-E-R. Initials F-M. What I think we have here is a classic example of…”

***

“Is this safe? Are we all in danger, standing here?”

“Well, as employees of the federal government, our job is to protect–”

“Protect? So you do think there’s something we need protection from?”

“Well, I didn’t say that exactly–”

“What are you saying then? Can the FBI say, definitively, that they have a handle on the situation and and citizens should rest assured they will not be harmed by this unknown creature?

All is silent, save for the deafening hum of landed helicopters and the buzz of a steadily increasing crowd.  
  
“Get that camera out of my face,” Scully says suddenly, shoving one hand over the lens while the other adjusts a brand new pair of sunglasses. 

**Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature!  
**

“Sir… sir…” Scully winces and pulls the orange phone away from her air, slapping a palm over the receiver. “I quit, by the way,” she hisses at Mulder, who cheats at Rock Paper Scissors. 

“Yes, we’re aware of the Bureau protocol on speaking with the media… no, we have not been briefed…”   
  
Mulder, sitting rather prettily at the orange table, watches Scully roll her eyes and make obscene hand gestures as their boss booms on like pissy thunder in her ear. He does not want to know what she looks like on the phone with him, his little beacon of professional grace.

Then her face turns entirely all too serious, and Mulder prepares himself to start yelling.

“Well yes, sir,” she says lowly from pursed lips. “We have chosen not to… discount… the lead…” she sighs like she’s seventy years old. “Bird- _like,_ sir. The distinction is important.”

 _Give me the phone_ , Mulder mouths while holding out his hand. She ignores him. Her face is hard, her posture harder.

“If you’ll forgive me, A.D. Skinner,” and he must have interrupted her, because she repeats herself. “If you’ll  _forgive me_ , A.D. Skinner, we are here investigating a kidnapping that may have a connection to a similar disapperance dating all the way back to the early seventies. I know I need not remind you that kidnapping is a serious federal offense, one that cannot remain unpunished for what could very well be a second time. Furthermore,” and she glares at Mulder, who looks like an axe-murderer when he wears that particular smile. “I’d advise you to take a second look at the 302 that  _you_  approved. Agent Mulder outlines the details as per his usual fastidiousness.”  
  
And then she hangs up.  
  
On their boss.  
  
Mulder begrudgingly relents when she ushers him out of her room, although he digs his feet in the carpet right before she shoves him through the door. Mulder does not want to leave her room. Mulder wants to tell ghost stories, and ask her about her father. He wants to listen to her worry over whether Dylan went to school that day. He wants to watch her shotgun Budlight and take her top off.  
  
For a brief, horrifying moment he wants to kiss her.  
  
Instead, he runs to his room and he adds more notes to his report on the big bird.

**Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature! Double Feature!**


	21. Chapter 21

The residents of Sandwood Trailer Park slowly retreat to their trailers.  
  
How long has this been going on? Choose the option that is most absurd:

  * It’s been less than a week, and President Bill Clinton has already caught on. He is making turkey pardon jokes in the middle of spring, though the bird is most certainly not a turkey.
  *  It’s been over a month, and… it’s been over a month. Your tax dollars are funding this and several other disappointing things. 



What makes less sense to you?  
  
Choose that.

The crowd today is larger than it’s ever been before. At least six beach balls are making the rounds, and the entire back section smells incredibly suspicious. Marshall is somewhere in the back. He did not return to his trailer.  Dr. Moreton screams in the background… something about nesting times, being too loud, something about habitat loss. But he’s a jerk about it. So nobody listens.  
  
There is a speaker arriving at eleven o’clock who claims he knows a lot about the big bird, despite having never set foot in Sandwood Trailer Park. However, he does have a website. The website is covered in little (big) animated birds, and he has a masters degree in something. No one has asked the residents of Sandwood Trailer Park to speak on the big bird, maybe because they do not have such pretty websites.

Our agents are understandably beginning to feel restless. For instance, when was the last chapter that included a really intriguing description of the big bird? Did the sunglasses  _really_  need to be reintroduced to the story? Mulder is wearing Scully’s new pair, by the way, and they do not fit around his head. He is still disgustingly attractive. Scully will get them back.  
  
They, too, consider retreating back to their homes. Separately. Doomed to a suffocating, lonely silence that does feel comforting after awhile. They lose a lot of hope when a popular franchise films a commercial right in the middle of their very serious investigation. “You think THIS is a big bird?” the franchise owner yells into the camera as the crowd goes wild behind him. “Getta load a’ THIS big bird!” Cut to tantalizing video of a slowly rotating chicken, just a little bigger than average.

They consider saying goodbye to the hospitable caricatures of poverty in the deep south, and maybe offering to restore some peace. A detached sort of guilt has filled them both. But it is very detached. Mulder and Scully feel lied to, after all. Mulder and Scully feel played.

Isn’t this what they were looking for, after all, our residents of Sandwood Trailer Park? Didn’t they want to be heard?  
  
But when Mulder and Scully go a’knocking, not a single person invites them in. It’s just like the first day. Most of the residents do not open their doors. Mr. Craig does, of course – but he only opens his metal door. He does not open his screen door. This is very hurtful.  
  
Instead, he pushes a newspaper up against the screen. Mulder and Scully read the headline aloud.  
  
“NEGLECTFUL MOTHER RUFFLES FEATHERS – BAD PARENTING, OR BIG BIRD?”


	22. Chapter 22

As quick as they came is how quickly they leave, and no one is friendly when they feel they’ve been lied to. The last of the snapdragons are trampled. The windchimes become tornado chimes when they’re ripped from a trailer and hauled off as bounty. It is comically easy to kick in the metal of a mobile home, and the sound is very satisfying. The residents mend the damage silently when the last of the mob trails out, and do not address Mulder and Scully when they roll up their sleeves to pitch in.

“I’m not sure what happened here,” Mulder says to Mr. Craig, who is sweeping up pieces of ceramic tiny frogs. Mr. Craig does not respond. The children even know to keep to themselves as they finish their own mandated chores, like fishing trash out of the pond and scooping out all the ruined “special” plants. It smarts a bit, when Mulder shows a cool rock to Shania and she just shrugs.

Scully, who has been around Mulder long enough to know how disappointed people get when their dreams are crushed, does not say anything either. She admits that the masses have overreacted. All the same. A man calling in to  _America This Morning_  put it best, she believes:

“I mean, you look at these people and you understand it,” he’d said, mourning the cancellation of Bruce Springsteen’s  _Bird in the U.S.A_  World Tour. “They feel small, so they lie. And now they can feel… big.”

But watching all the residents from behind her sunglasses, now stretched from a passive aggressive but mostly aggressive game of tug-o-war, something just doesn’t feel right about that sentiment. When she catches Brenda staring out at her from inside her home, the feeling emboldens. But… no. Scully absolutely does not… believe… in the big bird…


	23. Chapter 23

There’s a reason why Scully always rejects Mulder when he asks her to go on a run.

“I booked the return tickets,” Mulder yells into the night. He is currently ten yards ahead of her, but speaking as if she were by his side. “What?” Scully yells back. He doesn’t hear her. They run in silence for some time.

Crickets build a little cheerful chorus for them; tall, thick trees rustle with Spanish moss that reaches out in night winds and caresses the sky. The marshes are loamy, fruitful, give off a fertile scent that numbs the head and wrinkles the nose. Bull frogs copulate by the thousands. Mulder, on occasion, tosses his head back to watch Scully go. Her face is small in the dark. They will not copulate.

“I just don’t think they were lying, Scully,” he continues, refocusing on the trail ahead. Five more yards now, easily. Scully curses at him as she speeds up. If he could hear her he’d be proud of her creativity. “The general nature of these creatures lend to their evasiveness.” The sound of crunching leaves, beneath him. But he listens to the leaves behind him. “How could we have expected it to show up, disregarding years and years of evolutionary conditioning, just to give us all a show?” And then he stops, suddenly, eyes widening in revelation. “What if we’ve been looking in the wrong place?”

“What are you talking about?” She finally catches up, her body heat embracing his. He doesn’t answer, too busy working out a puzzle in his head.

“I don’t see the harm in staying,” Scully pants anyway, doubled over and miserable. “One more day. I get to keep the - the sunglasses tomorrow. Shit.”  
  
Mulder whips around to look at her. His grin is a slow, gorgeous thing.  
  
They briefly forget about the big bird. 


	24. Chapter 24

Brenda is not surprised when our agents show up at her door the next morning, though it is possible she’s decided Mulder and Scully are not actually involved with the FBI. She lets them in like she has no choice, and bounces the baby on her hip while she pointedly offers them not a thing to drink. Our agents feel this acutely. They have been watered like prized plants during the duration of their stay, and even fattened up. Southern hospitality is a killing thing, but is there truly a better way to die?

Scully keeps the sunglasses in her lap, trusting Mulder to keep his word and vials of her blood and with everything else she will ever need to trust him with. They sit together on a rather trendy loveseat, surrounded by knick knacks too stylish to be considered knick knacks, by certificates and circuit boards and framed college photos.  “How are you doing, Brenda?” Scully asks kindly, as Mulder does something soulful with his eyes. 

“You know,” Brenda replies airily. “Answering fan mail. Signing book deals. Enjoying my fame real well.” On the table, there  _are_  open envelopes, and just scanning over the letters, it is obvious that Brenda is being sarcastic. YOU SHOULD BE TARRED AND FEATHERED, writes Glenda from Mason City, Iowa, because hatemail is rarely original. 

“You didn’t let us in last time,” Mulder points out. “What’s changed?” 

At this, Brenda averts their eyes to study her child, a soft and fluffy lump in her cradled arms. “No one ever asked  _me_ ,” she says, voice tight with emotion. “ _No one_.”

It takes a moment for her audience to recognize she isn’t talking about  _them,_ specifically, but everyone. Her fellow residents, the mob, the media. But still Mulder says, “Brenda, we  _tried_. You wouldn’t talk to us.” Slowly, in his careful, hurting way, he pries: “Did you think we wouldn’t listen?”

Something about the way she looks at her child gives him his answer. Something about the way Brenda holds herself, tall and proud but so very wary, clears it all up.  _I tried the police_ , Mr. Craig had told them on that very first day,  _They just laughed_.  _Bill Nye even laughed._ Then there are the letters, spread out on the table.  _Terrible, terrible mother. Rotten. Neglectful._

_You should be tarred and feathered._

“Brenda.” Mulder stands up to encourage her to look at him, and when she does, her eyes are shining with tears. “We’ll listen to you, Brenda. We want to help you. Tell us what happened.” 

In fat, uneasy moments Brenda considers whether she should trust them or not. Her child makes gurgling noises that seem to make her decision for her. 

“Not only did no one ever ask me  _what_  the big bird is,” she starts out, a wavering smile gracing her lips. “No one asked me  _where_.”

And she proceeds to tell them more about the big bird. 


	25. Chapter 25

“Let me get this straight,” Scully says, after the entire story has been revealed to her. “This entire time, we’ve been looking in the wrong place.”

“Nobody asked me,” Brenda says simply, leading them outside. A detour and she’s pulling a baby seat out of a beat down Ford, and urging them to follow her behind her quaint little home.

“Shit,” Mulder says. Shit, Scully says louder, and thinks about what it would be like to smack God.

Behind Brenda’s trailer is another pond, almost a (hydrogen two oxygen) carbon copy of the one located in front of Sandwood Trailer Park. There are minor differences. This pond happens to double as a Harley cemetery: in the very middle, one old clunker reaches out like a hand from the grave. The palmetto bugs are as big as your own hands, depending on how big your hands are. Marshall’s backyard is visible and so is all the evidence these representatives of the federal government generously ignore.

“You’ve got to be fuc–” Mulder clamps his hand over Scully’s mouth. She completes her sentence anyway. Mulder smiles at Brenda benignly, as if in apology, and coos at the small fussy child in her arms.

Brenda hands an agent the baby, and the pair of them stare at it as the mother fills the side pockets of the baby seat with rocks. “To weigh it down. Just in case.” She rubs her hands together, looking determined, and gets the child all strapped in. “Just in case.” And she sits down, right in the patchy, irritating grass, and turns her eyes to the sky.

Mulder and Scully join her. What other option do they have?

The day is hot, the bugs are screaming loud, and all around them is the scent of paper mill and rotten well water. At one point, Mulder has to rub his eyes – the sun is a stinging, vengeful star, one that tends to loathe him like all of space. Scully checks his forehead and passes him the sunglasses. Brenda keeps one hand on top of the baby seat.

Soon, maybe hours later, they are joined by Mr. Craig, who has never once joined them in their search, not after his initial tour. “Hello, Brenda,” he greets, plopping down beside her. He hands her a fat spliff and she takes a fat drag. It’s as if no one believes they are in the presence of police.

Talking to the group, but looking at the sky, Mr. Craig says words that are beautiful but hard to understand. People can sound stupid without being so, another dichotomy of life.

“My ma lived here, and then she moved away.” His red eyes narrow, and his mouth forms a thin line under his glorious mustache. “I came back years ago cuz somethin’ drew me back here.”

Mulder looks at Scully. Scully looks at Mulder.

“You were taken, too,” Brenda says, still glaring at the clouds. “You’re the one the old bag keeps ranting about.”

“She ain’t so bad when you tune her out. Knits nice sweaters, and all. Don’t need sweaters much.”  Then he sighs. “Brenda, you never tried to get to know no one.”

“I never wanted to move here,” she admits.

“We like you here,” says Mr. Craig, so kindly. Brenda nods. Silence resumes. There is a certainty inside them all, and there is a certainty inside of you. It’s a different certainty, though. Believing, as they are, is a much stronger feeling than knowing, as you do. It is hard to put into words just how strongly they feel. But it connects them, even to Mulder and Scully, as it connects Mulder and Scully to them and most certainly to each other.

It is not long before the other trailers begin to filter out. The old woman and her daughter, dragging out their lawn chairs and arguing about women talking in church. Marshall and his chattering, untrustworthy smile. Shania, who’s now lost her few friends, and Dylan, who’s never had any. The girls at end who smack their gum and smile at Mulder. Others who have not been mentioned, but you have met. Sometime in your life, you’ve met them. Mr. Moreton, who means less to this story than he probably should, has even stuck around, and refuses to look Scully in the face.

They sit. They wait.

Today they will see the big bird.


	26. Chapter 26

Hours they spend by that retention pond, baking in the sun like homemade cookies. **  
**

But when it comes, the sun goes out.

… the sunglasses are slipped off, not even folded up properly. They simply fall into Scully’s lap when her face goes slack at the sky.

The young boy, Dylan, drops his BB gun without a sound. It had never been loaded anyway.

The old woman prays in an unknown tongue, and not to a God you would recognize. Her daughter joins in with the fever of a child who has just learned of hell, but not of a hell you fear.

The druggie scratches his face, his tongue, the lengths of his bony arms, and Shania spits and shouts  _I knew it_. Mr. Craig wipes tears from his eyes that always say the right things. Brenda leans her head on his shoulder, her baby cooing on her knees.

When it comes, the rest of the world falls away.

 _Do you see it?_  Mulder asks by taking Scully’s hand in his.  _Yes I do_ , Scully responds by squeezing around his fingers. He hardly believes she is there. She hardly believes what she is seeing. None of them do. But with a flap of its wings, they know.

To tell the story of a monster is to tell the story of its creator. You want to know, too. The wingspan of the bird, the diet – does it snack on human children, does it have a favorite rock band? Was it born from a lab, would it make a good pillow, does the beak drip with the blood of the innocent? Of the guilty? Is it half human, does it at all resemble a human, does it even resemble a bird? Does it love? Does it hate? What color is the bird and what shape is the bird and what is the bird, really, isn’t that what you’ve been waiting for? To tell the story of a monster is to tell the story of its creator…

And you have learned all you need to know. But you may rest easy.

You can be assured that it was, indeed, a very  _big_ bird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for following around with my little story, and I hope you enjoyed it!


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